Native Guard Quotes

“I returned
to a field of cotton, hallowed ground —

as slave legend goes — each boll
holding the ghosts of generations:

those who measured their days
by the heft of sacks and lengths

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants
still sewn into our clothes.”
― Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard: Poems

“We take those things we need
from the Confederates’ abandoned homes:
salt, sugar, even this journal, near full
with someone else’s words, overlapped now,
crosshatched beneath mine. On every page,
his story intersecting with my own.”
― Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard: Poems

“In my dream,
the ghost of history lies down beside me,

rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.”
― Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard: Poems